


in the upright position

by bottomchanyeol, kuraku



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Aviophobia, M/M, Mile High Club
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 05:39:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17016765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bottomchanyeol/pseuds/bottomchanyeol, https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuraku/pseuds/kuraku
Summary: chanyeol has aviophobia, a fear of flying. an emergency requires him to catch a flight overseas, and the man next to him might be his only hope of making it out alive.【BOTTOM CHANYEOL 2018 FIC FEST → #102 】





	in the upright position

Stepping out of the taxi, Chanyeol stared up in horror at the front of the building—one so huge, it seemed, that it stretched out across the foundation in looming premonition, ready to swallow and gobble up all the eager passengers scuttling through its doors.

Part of the reason that Chanyeol hated flying so much was the atmosphere of the airport itself. Once, when he was smaller, Chanyeol thought that traveling all over the world was an attractive alternative to settling down in a small suburb in Seoul and committing himself to a lifetime of business attire and Monday morning meetings. Still, despite his aversion to travel, Chanyeol had instead decided to commit himself to a comfortable lack of routine, working as an assistant in a small, hidden tattoo parlor, honing his own modest illustrative talent and writing music until the eager hours of dawn. It was a life his parents had somewhat reluctantly agreed to support, because after all, what was the point of having their only son unhappy all the time? His mother, kind and gentle, was the enthusiastic one—though she grew more and more apprehensive of the ink climbing up Chanyeol’s arms, little designs and decorations he hoped to turn into a full sleeve. Someday. ‘Art by Park Chanyeol’ - it had a nice ring to it, right? His own personal canvas.

Besides, not everyone could be the perfect person his sister was. Not that he resented her for it: they had always gotten along when they were younger and continued to, still, despite the physical distance between them, but his sister was the embodiment of everything he was not, the antithesis of his wild adventuring. His sister, a star in university, using her grades and connections to land a successful anchoring position, traveling internationally to report on worldwide issues and stories that required determination and grace to investigate. His sister, who always affectionately ruffled his hair despite his height. Park Yura, beautiful and friendly, and constantly there to support her precious little brother.

The sound of his suitcase wheels creaking on the linoleum flooring jerked Chanyeol out of his contented daydreaming. Another passenger had pushed past him to use the self check-in kiosk, and Chanyeol let her, because he was sure that if he opened his mouth to speak, the woman would burst into a flurry of insults and backwards reasoning and Chanyeol was already on edge enough. Part of him, amused, wondered just how a slight little lady could think that elbowing a six foot tall, hard-muscled young man would be a good idea. Then again, he had the feeling that despite his menacing appearance, there was something about his face that gave him away. A softness in his eyes, the hesitant, almost shy quirk of his smile.

Not everyone could be a solid rock of determination. Chanyeol, a gently stubborn heart, was more like a flower: stiff and structured on the outside to protect the soft warmth on the inside. 

With his boarding pass in hand, Chanyeol dropped his suitcase off at the counter and breathed a thick sigh of relief. One hurdle completed. The easiest one, but Chanyeol was just counting his blessings at this point. Anything to keep propelling him forward, into security and customs, and then, further: closer and closer to the hell of being locked in the airplane, unable to breathe.

It wasn’t just the airport that had his nerves twisted into a tangle—it was the prospect of flying itself. One of his coworkers told him once about the dangers of flying: the way the airplanes were so fragile, that they didn’t regularly replace the parts, and crammed as many people as humanly possible into them, to the point that it risked the structural integrity of the plane to keep them there. Chanyeol’s fear had already been budding at that point, but had blossomed into an ugly flower then, full and pulsing with anxiety. The feeling of being a large person in an airplane made him feel like the entire cabin lacked enough oxygen; his head so close to the top made him feel like Alice in Wonderland, stuffed into a house with arms and legs sticking awkwardly out the windows.

So he decided that staying in Seoul wasn’t so bad. After all, there was plenty to do in Korea, right? Lots to see, right? He could always take a boat to other places! Drive across continents! There were options!

Except, of course, when his sister was stuck abroad for a long-term assignment, eight months pregnant, unable to return back to Korea—and having complications requiring her hospitalization. His parents couldn’t take time off to see her, and Chanyeol’s schedule was flexible enough that it made more sense for him to go and be of some help to her.

“This is it,” Chanyeol mumbled to himself, standing in wait to walk his way through the metal detector, the point of no return. “This is how I finally die.”

Security eyeballed him, but didn’t ask him to wait behind. His anxiety pills made it through with little speculation. His seat was an aisle, like he requested, and the gate wasn’t much of a walk. In theory, everything was as painless as it could have been.

That just meant the worst was yet to come.

Standing in line to board the plane, Chanyeol’s chest started to clench. The sight of the tunnel, connecting the gate to the airplane, loomed before him, taunting him, as if saying: _this is your last chance, you’ll never escape if you keep going forward._

Chanyeol’s hand closed around the handle of his bag. He showed his passport, scanned his boarding pass, and walked mechanically forward, through the claustrophobia of the tunnel, thick with hot, uncirculated air, and towards the shallow overhang of the airplane door.

The flight attendant beamed at him, and Chanyeol forced a weak smile in return. His sunglasses hid the terror probably hanging in his eyes.

“Straight and then right, sir,” she chirped at him, and hanging his head, Chanyeol shuffled forward. It was easy enough to follow the person in front of him, past all the first class seats and through business class, down into coach, and then Chanyeol jerked his head up, squinting at the seat numbers through his glasses. With the burdensome weight of disappointment, he noticed someone already sitting in his row, looking out the window with the pleasure of a person not plagued by the fear of riding a giant metal box suspended in the air. Wordlessly, Chanyeol sunk down into his chair, bending just enough to stuff his bag under the seat in front of him, and then leaned back.

Through the haze of anxiety—eyes darting back and forth and finally fluttering shut in an attempt to still the rapid clenching of his heart, in and then out again—Chanyeol heard a flight attendant speaking over the intercom, instructing seatbelts and tray tables and maybe, Chanyeol could just ask to wear a life jacket for the duration of the flight? Pop out the oxygen mask, breathe deeply for the next few hours? One of his hands went up to his bangs, shaggy and overgrown, brushing them away from his forehead. They were sticky with sweat.

“Seatbelt,” he heard again, from somewhere. Chanyeol twisted in his chair for a moment, before realizing: it was the man next to him, gently touching his arm.

“Your seatbelt,” he repeated, and Chanyeol discovered that, like an inexperienced flight idiot, he had sunken into his chair without fastening it. Maneuvering his body to free it out from beneath him was hard enough—stretching it to buckle around him was another trial, and with some incredulity, he noticed that the man next to him was actually laughing at him. Seriously? Chanyeol’s shoulders squared, jerking the seatbelt tight before falling back against the seatback in annoyance. Still, being annoyed was better than being scared, and dryly, he considered thanking his rowmate. 

The flight attendants continued their checks down the aisle, and Chanyeol couldn’t help but glance to the side, towards the window. They were close to the wing, he realized: Chanyeol had had nightmares about this very situation, that he would glance out and see the wing catch fire, boil up into smoke and flares and crumble away, unbalancing the aircraft and leaving them vulnerable to a hard water landing. His shoulders started to tremble. The crew announced they were preparing for take off. Chanyeol’s hands curled around the armrests, which were almost too short for him, and clutched at the plastic.

“You look tense,” the man next to him said. It sounded like it came from far away—as far away as Chanyeol’s anxiety medication was, stuffed under the seat in front of him, which would be hard to get to if he were a normal sized person, but the length of his legs, crammed in against the back of the seat in front of him like a sardine folded into a tin can, made it seem impossible, like trying to cross the Nile River in an inner tube.

“I hate flying,” Chanyeol said, through gritted teeth. He could feel his cheeks flaring, hoping that his sunglasses might hide some of it, and ridiculously, he wanted to cry. Maybe this was just too much. His sister would understand, right? If he ran off the plane now? If he yelled out, cried for them to turn it off?

The seats began to rumble. Chanyeol swallowed down the lump in his throat—it bobbed, and came back up again, and in any other situation, Chanyeol would have shrugged off the touch of a stranger, too nervous to let it continue. But the hand that slid down the length of his arm was warm and comforting and when that hand came to meet his own, squeezing the life out of the armrest, he relented, met it palm to palm, and instead felt himself crushing the small little bones under the pale skin in his grip. He hoped the other man wouldn’t sue.

“What kind of tattoo do you want to get next?” The man asked, and Chanyeol, surprised, jerked his head to look at him. Did he know this guy? After all, how would he know to ask that? _Idiot_ —his shirt, short-sleeved and loose, showed a good portion of the ink on his arm, trailing down towards his wrist. Chanyeol scrunched his nose in thought. The man—at least through the dark shadow of Chanyeol’s sunglasses—was good looking, calm and relaxed, with one of those smiles that spoke of playful mischief and amusement, the kind of guy who would burst out with a silly idea in the middle of the night, like jumping a fence or going skinny dipping.

The weight of their hands together was comforting, even though Chanyeol was certain he was crushing the other’s fingers to death.

“I kind of wanted to get a monkey or something, ‘cause that’s my zodiac, but I don’t know how to blend it in with what’s already there. I’ve been sketching, but I can’t quite get it right, or even the size really, but I was definitely thinking something black and white...” came tumbling out of Chanyeol’s mouth before he could stop himself. The plane was on an incline—his ears were ringing—but too focused on the question, and his ideas, Chanyeol could feel himself losing the fixation with how the whole airplane was going to come crashing down.

“I’m also a monkey,” the man said, and grinned, suddenly, and Chanyeol found, much to his surprise, that he smiled back, weak and water-colored. 

“Do you do this all yourself?” He persisted, and Chanyeol found himself pouring out an explanation of his work situation, words that tumbled and crashed into each other, like a river flowing downstream, eager and persistent. Somewhere in the haze of his over-voiced rambling—the airplane was loud, too loud, so much that Chanyeol bent his head down some to bridge the gap between himself and the smaller man next to him—there was a dinging sound, and the shuffling of passengers around them, and Chanyeol realized, quite suddenly, that the plane had leveled out in the air, and that the man next to him was actually responsible for his slow descent back into a cautiously normal cardiac rhythm.

The flight, Chanyeol surmised, was going to go okay. The optimism he felt in the moment, small as it seemed, was a relief, especially compared to the daunting misery that had overtaken him during boarding, and the conversation kept between him and his seatmate was enough to at least distract him from the sudden jump his blood pressure made when the plane dipped a little, a small rumble of turbulence.

In response, his seatmate—whose name, Chanyeol realized after a moment, he still didn’t know—flagged down a flight attendant and, after a flash of charm which had Chanyeol looking back and forth between both of them in incredulence, acquired them a few extra bottles of liquor, tiny ones that made Chanyeol’s fingers tremble, already jumping ahead to the undeniable future where his big, clumsy hands would knock all the tiny bottles between their seats and down into the chasm at their feet, unable to be retrieved by his oversized body stuffed into the tiny sausage casing of his seat.

Instead, Chanyeol downed two of them at once, and suddenly, the flight didn’t seem so scary at all.  
In fact, after the next little bottle, everything felt warm and relaxed, as if the entire flight were under his control, willed into submission by the soft blur of alcohol. The steady hum of the engine, the flirty lilt of the voice next to him, the darkness of the cabin as they cut the lights down, some, as if to help encourage even a bit of rest for a flight that was relatively short compared to others—everything felt as though it were going according to plan, and Chanyeol’s eyes slipped shut for a moment, falling into a peaceful half-mast. 

The hand sliding up his thigh? Well, it was unexpected, maybe, but not entirely unwelcome. That sort of thing was part of the thrill of traveling, right? Finding a connection with some stranger, never to meet again? Curious, Chanyeol found his eyes opening again, wandering past the shaded comfort of his sunglasses and then, down, to where his own hand rested, light and unbothered on the armrest. His lap was full of the tiny bottles, and no flight attendant had come to relieve him of them. The man next to him smiled, widely, and Chanyeol slowly peeled off his glasses, folding them and stuffing them clumsily into the seat pocket, as if doing so would help him read whatever subtext scrolled through the other’s gaze.

“Bathroom?” The man indicated with a nod of his chin towards Chanyeol’s legs—and immediately, perversely, Chanyeol felt his cheeks go red, flushed with the blood of embarrassment, as his knees pushed together, trying to hide whatever part of him indicated he needed to go. After a moment, it clicked: there was a trashcan in the bathroom, and it would be easier to discard of the bottles there, without the scrutiny of other flight attendants wondering how or why he managed to get so many. Laughing—a low, husky sort of sound, stuck between embarrassment and amusement in his throat—Chanyeol nodded, gathering up the empty alcohol containers in his palms and then realizing, dumbly, that he was still locked into his seat.

Warm hands reached for him, flicking the seatbelt open with little care. Chanyeol’s neck felt hot as he stumbled, kneeing the seat in front of him in an attempt to peel himself out of his chair without being a complete idiot, stumbling onto his feet in the aisle. Curiously, those same, warm hands were at the small of his back, pushing him, and without any sort of complaint, Chanyeol rocked and teetered his way down the walkway towards the bathrooms at the back of the plane.

Even curiouser, the door to the handicapped bathroom opened above him—were these equipped with sensors, now? The more likely explanation could be the man at his back, nudging it open ahead of him, but the thought didn’t occur to him. Eyes wide, Chanyeol walked into the bright fluorescent, squinting as his fingers tried to find the lip of the trashcan, hoping to dump the bottles in and jerk back out. Walking on the airplane (being upright, really) made him infinitely uncomfortable, as if the walls were closing in around him, the ceiling too close to his head. The bottles clanged against each other as they tumbled into the trash, and relieved, Chanyeol turned—to find the door closed, somehow, and his seatmate standing against it, hands behind his back as though to prevent anyone from tampering with the lock. 

The bathroom wasn’t as small as he had imagined, but even with the extra space, Chanyeol could feel the oxygen thinning, as if the room didn’t hold enough for two people. His lips parted in earnest, sucking in a large breath, and then regretting it. One of his hands grappled for the counter edge, long fingers curled around it, trying to find purchase in the imitation marble. The plastic was slightly damp, water from the sink dribbled around it, and Chanyeol could feel it in the space between his fingers.

“Shouldn’t we sit back down?” He heard himself saying, but his voice was drowned out by the hum of the lights above him, the vibration of the plane at his back, where he’d stumbled backwards and bumped into the plastic wall near the toilet, and he felt like he was sliding, like the material of his shirt made no impact on the smooth texture behind him. 

“Do you want to?” Came the voice of his seatmate, who had, somewhat incredulously, closed the distance between them with a speed that made Chanyeol start to sweat around the collar of his oversized t-shirt, and he could feel the saliva in his mouth dry, at once, as if the bright lights of the bathroom were as hot as the sun itself, baking him in the pressure of its heat. His seatmate was close enough that Chanyeol could count every little eyelash that stuck to the others, dark and thick; he was close enough that Chanyeol could taste the air between them, a sickly sweet sort of weight thanks to the alcohol they had both consumed. He could see his reflection in the dark sheen of his seatmate’s eyes, and impatiently, Chanyeol sucked in another breath. 

“I want...” Chanyeol started, but he couldn’t quite make out the words. He could feel the warm weight of hands on his shirt, pressing down against the lean muscle of his stomach. Embarrassingly, Chanyeol wanted those hands higher, around his neck or pressed up into his hair, pulling it away from his face. It wasn’t his first experience with another man—and, quite frankly, if it happened, it certainly wouldn’t be the last, either—but there was something deliciously forbidden about having a stranger touching him, as if the lights of the airplane and the soft hum and buzz of the flight around them was really the sound at the back of a club, behind the bar and in the bathroom where no one would notice them missing, where encounters with strangers were more encouraged and less taboo.

“Yes?” Came the voice again, but lower this time, as if the amusement in it weighed it down, into the back of the man’s throat.

“I want,” Chanyeol tried again, but felt his stomach twist; the hands were pressing up his chest, curving over the shape of him, gripping his shoulders and the damp, ribbed fabric of his shirt collar. He cleared his throat and this time, with a bit of a demand—“...to know your name, first.”

The man laughed, and then Chanyeol, incredulous and somewhat surprised at himself, laughed too, and the sound mixed between them in such a way that he felt his stomach ache, a little, because he wanted things to stay this way, comfortable and light and without sour feelings or unfulfilled expectations or his own idiocy getting in the way.

“Baekhyun,” he said, and their faces came closer together—Chanyeol couldn’t figure out if he was the one who had done it, or if it had been something mutual, or maybe just Baekhyun advancing on him, pushing him up against the back of the bathroom with such a force that Chanyeol, despite being the bigger body, felt he couldn’t protest. His eyes fell shut as if encouraged by some silent proposition; Baekhyun’s lips pressed against his mouth and Chanyeol’s hand slipped against the edge of the counter, desperate for purchase there, for some way to hold on against the rush of good feeling that threatened to sweep him down, like a swimmer lost to the waves of the ocean, drowning and gasping for air.

The way Baekhyun kissed him spoke to an urgency that Chanyeol’s body, easily, stupidly, fell into; he could feel the heat bubbling in his stomach, dripping down, pooling between his legs in a way that surely became painfully obvious to the warm body pressed up against him, because Baekhyun had a leg between his and his hips flush up against him and Chanyeol sort of wanted to die, here, like this, without Baekhyun noticing his half-hard length sandwiched between them and laughing at him for being so easy.

They kissed until Chanyeol’s lips went numb. They kissed until Chanyeol had thoroughly memorized the weight of Baekhyun’s tongue, eager and skilled in a way that Chanyeol envied, because he was clumsy and sloppy and weighed down by all of that alcohol—and why, why had he had that much to drink anyway? The plane hummed behind him as if in answer, and the reminder of his fear seemed like such a small hiccup to the arousal pulsing through him, practically throbbing through every wet smack of their lips together. They kissed until Baekhyun’s hand worked its way down between their bodies, and silently, without any sort of teasing or surprise or any of the negativity that Chanyeol had been expecting, pressed up against his length in his jeans, rubbing at it with a methodical pressure from the heel of his palm.

Chanyeol’s knees threatened to buckle; his mouth fell from Baekhyun’s with a gasp. Baekhyun’s other hand was flat against Chanyeol’s shoulder, pressing into him, holding him down, while the other rubbed and teased and coaxed at him until Chanyeol’s erection felt hard and almost painful, strained into the denim of his jeans and the soft cotton of the briefs underneath, and Chanyeol hung his head for a moment, embarrassed of himself, of the way he panted and encouraged and pushed his hips into the sensation, as if seeking more, as if there could possibly be more than the simple pleasure of being rubbed to orgasm which Chanyeol hadn’t experienced, outside of his own touch, in quite a long damn time.

When Baekhyun’s hands moved, pushed against his chest, Chanyeol figured he was just too drunk to stay upright. He figured that maybe he’d dropped something, when Baekhyun’s knees sank into the cold floor of the airplane bathroom, damp with the water from around the counter and the sink. He figured he’d probably sink to the floor himself if Baekhyun’s hands hadn’t reached for his hips, pushing them back against the wall, and really, honestly, he figured that Baekhyun must just be insane, when he reached for the front of Chanyeol’s jeans and nimbly drew down the zipper.

“Whoa,” Chanyeol said, or something that sounded like it, anyway, words crashing together, and he couldn’t quite figure out what it was he had hoped to say, anyway, and pressed his mouth shut. Baekhyun’s hands felt warm, and Chanyeol was too embarrassed to look down—he was afraid he’d come on the spot, and he couldn’t even imagine the kind of apology that would be expected of him if he got it all over Baekhyun’s face without warning, so he pushed his head back and stared, for a moment, at the plastic ceiling of the bathroom, where the light blinked once, and the cabin knocked a little with movement.

“Fuck,” Chanyeol blurted out, full of nerves, when the cabin slid slightly to one side again, and his hand grappled up the side of the wall, hoping for some kind of handle there to keep him from falling over. One of Baekhyun’s hands held down the elastic of his briefs; his jeans had been painstakingly dragged down to his thighs, the denim bunched up there, and Chanyeol felt an acute pinch of fear again: he’d never be able to walk, let alone run, for the nearest exit if the plane were to start going down. 

And then Baekhyun’s mouth closed over the tip of his erection, and Chanyeol realized he didn’t really give a fuck about the plane anymore.

With his free hand—the one not clutching at the plastic of the wall like it could still find purchase in something—he reached for the top of Baekhyun’s head, long fingers finding soft hair, there, pushing back through it, enjoying the feel of it, and Baekhyun’s mouth hummed around him in a way that made Chanyeol’s knees tremble again, threatening to give out. It was impossible to guide him: Baekhyun knew what he wanted to do, how fast he wanted to go, how hard he wanted to suck, and Chanyeol was, quite simply, along for the embarrassingly short ride, accented by the soft bursts of encouragement that fell out of his lips and the warm hums of acknowledgement from the mouth around him, and despite wanting to tell Baekhyun he didn’t have to do it, didn’t have to keep it in his mouth, Chanyeol found himself selfishly silent even as the feeling built to impossible levels inside of him, warning of collapse.

His orgasm cascaded over him suddenly, a jerk of his hips forward, and Baekhyun’s mouth slid down his erection and Chanyeol pushed into him, soft little tides of movement, in and out, until he felt the need decrease, slowly, and Baekhyun’s hands loosened against his hips and— _fuck, someone is knocking on the damn door._

Chanyeol began to panic—Baekhyun’s hand let go of the elastic of his briefs with a snap that earned a whimper of surprise, and Baekhyun got to his feet while Chanyeol stuffed himself back into his jeans, doing up the zipper and closing the button with a flurry of clumsy fingers.

“Fucking fuck,” Chanyeol mumbled as he smoothed out his shirt and Baekhyun fixed his clothes and then they both passed their hands over each other, wordlessly fixing little twists of fabric, the tiny dents in their hair, and Chanyeol wiped Baekhyun’s lips gently with the palm of his hand after he’d turned to spit into the bathroom sink and they both looked at each other, and grinned, and Chanyeol realized that despite everything, he felt about a thousand times better than he’d expected to, getting onto this airplane, and most if not all of it was not thanks to his anxiety medication but, instead, this stranger standing in front of him, the one with the soft smile and the mischievous eyes and Chanyeol wanted to kiss him again but wasn’t sure how he felt about the prospect of tasting himself on Baekhyun’s lips.

It felt like a moment that should be treasured—it felt like that split second was his only chance to say something.

Chanyeol reached for Baekhyun’s wrist as he turned to open the door, mouth open and ready, but the safe space between them broke when the seal on the doorway broke and Baekhyun said some flurry of concern about his sick friend and medication and this-or-that, and Chanyeol was jerked along down the corridor of the airplane, past the flight attendant who had knocked somewhat impatiently on the door to check up on them, past the rows of quiet passengers who didn’t even look up or seem to acknowledge that anything had changed, because for them, nothing had, but Chanyeol definitely felt different when he sank down into his seat and Baekhyun did his seatbelt up for him and after a moment, drew the shade up, slightly, to let a sliver of natural light in from the window, shining it into the space of their laps.

“We’re landing soon,” Baekhyun chirped up, close to his ear, and Chanyeol offered a vague grin and a nod, embarrassed to meet Baekhyun’s gaze, embarrassed to admit that his eyes kept straying to Baekhyun’s mouth, instead, to the little mole above one of his lips that Chanyeol hadn’t noticed at all while kissing him and wanted, oddly, to press his thumb over, to follow down to the curve of his lips, playful and slim, until Baekhyun turned away from him to look out the window some more and Chanyeol pretended to fix his seatbelt.

 

Landing was a blur—Chanyeol blamed part of that on the alcohol, still lingering in his system a good hour later, and part of it on the hard grip he had on Baekhyun’s arm the entire time, especially when the wheels hit the landing strip and their plane jerked forward and Chanyeol’s eyes watered a little, hunching over in his seat as if to brace himself as they rumbled from a tense speed to a gentle cant forward, into the landing gate.

The relief he felt, getting off the plane, clearing the double doors back into the airport, was matched with a heavy weight of disappointment—he had lost Baekhyun somewhere between tumbling out of his seat and making his way down the aisle, and the walk through the airport to baggage claim was awkward and difficult, his legs stiff from travel, his body warm and lethargic. Row after row of metallic conveyers, a sea of passengers and airport personnel, and Chanyeol still looked around, helplessly, hoping to spot Baekhyun without looking like he was hoping to spot Baekhyun as he waited in front of his section.

Baekhyun, it turned out, was surprisingly hard to miss: he’d gotten ahead of Chanyeol, somehow—probably when Chanyeol had stopped into the bathroom to make sure his fly was actually zipped— and as he waited for his baggage a mere two feet away, he looked back at Chanyeol watching him, and smiled, and all Chanyeol could offer was a half-hearted smirk before he looked down at his sneakers, and tried to push down the feeling that he was missing out on something big by not having the courage to approach the other man at all.

What was the protocol for an airplane hook-up, anyway? Chanyeol considered texting his sister to ask—but knew instantly she would yell at him for such trivial desperation, on his part, and moved his hand away from the pocket with his phone in it. It was a lost cause. It was what it had been, and that was all it would be. It was stupid to be soft about it, or to want to pursue it, because what would come of it, anyway?

Watching the luggage go by on the conveyor belt, Chanyeol took a deep breath, and let his mind wander. He’d have to get his suitcase, and then find a taxi, and then head to the hospital, and then....

There was the sound of wheels next to him, the heavy weight of a suitcase as it ran over the top of his foot, and Chanyeol swore out loud, jerking his head to the side as if to say something to the idiot who’d managed to interrupt his moping with the real, tangible prick of pain.

Instead, Baekhyun stood there, grinning at him, a tall white suitcase sandwiched between their bodies—and sitting on the toe of Chanyeol’s sneaker, which he jerked out from under it with a scowl.

“So,” Baekhyun said, a lilt to his voice that made Chanyeol smile, unconsciously, even as he tried not to stare, and he made a low noise, encouraging Baekhyun to continue, and purposefully moved his gaze to the conveyor belt again, as if to mask his eagerness, the sudden leap of excitement in the back of his throat.

“When’s your next flight?” Baekhyun asked.

Chanyeol laughed, once, and looked down at him, incredulous that he would ask that of a near stranger—and told him.

**Author's Note:**

> this one went a little off the rails from the original prompt, but i hope that it’s still enjoyable regardless! it’s been a long time since i’ve written chanyeol and i really wanted to have fun with it, although at times it felt like a bit of a struggle. ;; thank you so much for reading!!


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